Chlorine in laundry wash liquor causes fabrics to fade. Higher value laundry detergents and fabric softeners may include chlorine scavengers to associate with chlorine with the goal of minimizing color fading.
Traditional chlorine scavengers, such as ammonium chloride or polyethyleneimines (PEIs), can be used to scavenge chlorine. But, incorporating ammonium chloride or polyethyleneimines into compositions may have negative effects on the product's viscosity, including thinning the product to an unacceptable level.
While prior disclosures have used PEI in a granular laundry detergent composition, these granular laundry detergent compositions have identified problems with chlorine scavenging efficacy for PEIs having an average molecular weight above 1000 or for PEIs with tertiary amine groups (See, e.g., Australian Patent No. 17813/95). Other examples of using PEI in laundry detergent compositions have shown that low amounts (e.g., from about 0.5% to about 1% by weight of the formulation) may be effective in removing certain difficult to remove stains, but PEI in an amount less than about 0.5% by weight can be ineffective and PEI in an amount greater than about 1-2% by weight may cause stains to fix to fabrics (See, e.g., U.S. 2012/0122747).
Although some manufacturers have attempted to modify chlorine scavenging compositions to enhance fabric care benefit, these methods have been expensive and failed to provide an adequate overall desirable fabric care profile.